Old and new forms, old and new meanings: the form-function hypotheses revisited

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Abstract
The spontaneous speech of fifteen children was examined in order to test two hypotheses: (1) newly acquired forms are first used to express previously acquired meanings; (2) newly acquired meanings are first expressed by pre viously acquired forms. The data provide support for these hypotheses, but also demonstrate other relations between the acquisition of linguistic forms and meanings. The implications of the findings for theories of language development are briefly considered.

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